Page:Eliot - Daniel Deronda, vol. IV, 1876.djvu/104

 is a talent to love—I lacked it. Others have loved me—and I have acted their love. I know very well what love makes of men and women—it is subjection. It takes another for a larger self, enclosing this one,"—she pointed to her own bosom. "I was never willingly subject to any man. Men have been subject to me."

"Perhaps the man who was subject was the happier of the two," said Deronda—not with a smile, but with a grave, sad sense of his mother's privation.

"Perhaps—but I was happy—for a few years I was happy. If I had not been afraid of defeat and failure, I might have gone on. I miscalculated. What then? It is all over. Another life! Men talk of 'another life' as if it only began on the other side of the grave. I have long entered on another life." With the last words she raised her arms till they were bare to the elbow, her brow was contracted in one deep fold, her eyes were closed, her voice was smothered: in her dusky flame-coloured garment, she looked like a dreamed visitant from some region of departed mortals.

Deronda's feeling was wrought to a pitch of acuteness in which he was no longer quite master of himself. He gave an audible sob. His